Elena Maietta

By Esther Frost

Have you ever wondered what it's like teaching music during a pandemic? Elena Maietta has been teaching some of the music classes at Albuquerque High for three years. When Ms. Maietta was younger, she went to high school at Albuquerque High. This helped influence where she would teach. One of the things she loves about teaching at Albuquerque High is that the drama department is great. She loves being able to help with the musicals and her favorite one she’s worked on is Little Shop of Horrors.

What got Ms. Maietta into teaching. When asked what got her into teaching she replied, “I didn’t realize I wanted to be a teacher until I was already teaching a choir. Basically I had the qualifications and skills to lead a choir and a community group approached me to be their teacher and that’s how I realized that I didn’t want to be a solo performer and I wanted to be in the classroom.”

When Ms. Maietta was younger; she had a choir teacher who really pushed her to go into music education and his words stuck with her so much that she did become a music teacher eventually. Ms. Maietta's first love of music showed up when she was younger and her grandma would sing with her every day and let her choose the radio station.

How Ms. Maietta usually teaches her class. Ms. Maietta’s class is normally very fast-paced and heavily based around all students singing and making noise all the time. Everything is always planned and almost over-planned. It’s incredibly interactive. Miss Maietta said that there was, “A lot of emphasis on different avenues for performance and programs that explore our own context as people while also connecting us with the many wonderful cultures around the world.”

What teaching music during the pandemic has been like. Now that schools have moved online, teaching for her has completely changed. Because the classes cannot sing altogether she has had to think and work hard on what projects and history of music she can teach her students. She says, “It’s been really challenging to conceive of what virtual choir looks like at Albuquerque High because most of our students are first year choir students and so they’re developing the vocabulary of music making and the vocabulary of singing and song without real time feedback from their teacher.” The choir classes are investigations into music making and sound/song but until the classes started getting ready for graduation they didn’t work on making music altogether.

When Ms. Maietta was asked what song describes her life she said, “Breakable by Ingrid Michaelson, and I love this song because it really speaks to the universal feeling of fragility and if all of us are breakable then all of us ought to protect each other.”